In Memory of Sam Genensky

Posted by Carl Augusto on 7/21/2009 11:49:07 AM

On June 26, 2009, we said goodbye to Sam Genensky, an incredible man and a dear friend to the field of blindness and to AFB. Sam won the Migel Medal, the highest honor in the blindness field, in 1998 and he was also one of our esteemed CareerConnect mentors. I'm thrilled that we have Sam's story, in his own words, forever documented in the CareerConnect section of our web site. I highly encourage you to read Sam's full story, but also wanted to share with you some of my personal interactions with Sam.

Sam was left visually impaired by an accident in infancy, and subsequently lived the majority of his 81 years with low vision. While Sam is known as the father of CCTV—a system for projecting magnified text on video screens that has helped millions of partially sighted people around the world to read—I think he could be called the father of low vision. He was driven to find the various low vision aids that would enable him to function optimally in every situation. The first time I met Sam was in the late 70s or early 80s. He was visiting New York and I met him at his hotel where he was armed with a bag of various low vision devices. He used different ones to read the signs on the street, to read the menu during dinner, and to check out other things in his environment. I was impressed, especially because he was never self-conscious while using low vision aids.

Sam was an inspirational leader and never missed an opportunity to express his strong opinions on controversial issues. You always knew where he stood. I visited him several times at his place—the Center for Partially Sighted—of which he was so proud. Under Sam's and LaDonna Ringering's leadership, the Center has become a preeminent, if not the preeminent, leader in this country in providing services to people with low vision.

Sam will truly be missed, but his legacy will continue as we try to make our world more accessible for people with low vision. You can read more about Sam's life by visiting the Wall Street Journal.

Please feel free to leave us a memory of Sam in the comments section below.

Re: In Memory of Sam Genensky
Posted by Detra Bannister on 7/27/2009 12:59:22 PM

I had to chuckle at Mark's comment about Sam "having a thing" in regard to the "callousness" of designing products that "were not usable to people with vision loss." Did he ever and rightfully so.

I had the pleasure and good fortune of becoming friends with Sam several years ago and found him to be a very passionate, caring, innovative and interesting person. How I'll miss chatting with him.

Sam used his gifts and talents to benefit others and I appreciate that as I have been one of the many beneficiaries of Sam's work. Thank you Sam! I hope that heaven is everything you thought it would be and then some!

Re: In Memory of Sam Genensky
Posted by Mark Uslan on 7/24/2009 5:26:30 PM

Sam would have loved the small visual display research we are doing at AFB TECH because it addresses an obvious problem that drives people with vision loss crazy -- the hard to see displays on so many of today's products-- and because the research entails a lot of physics and math, disciplines that Sam was passionate about. Sam was an excellent translator of hard to understand, esoteric concepts such as is the case in optics. He was an "everyman" who articulated the importance of very simple but very bothersome problems that need to be dealt with if you have low vision. Yet he had the intellect and the discipline to dig deep and understand what was going on and what needed to be done, which he did indeed do. He also seemed to have a thing about the callousness of designing things that were not usable to people with vision loss.

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